postmaster @outlook.com emails

Question

For over several weeks now I have been getting these postmaster @outlook.com emails. They are saying "Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups: [<PII removed>@gmail.com] ([<PII removed>@gmail.com])." I have never forwarded or tried to send any emails to [<PII removed>@gmail.com]. Not only am I getting these but they are attaching themselves to actual emails that are currently in my inbox. When I delete these [postmaster @outlook.com] emails, my original emails in my inbox also delete. I have tried blocking these, reporting them as junk, reporting them as phishing scams, and just deleting them. Nothing is working and I get over 26 of these type of emails a day. They are also removing my current emails from inbox. What is happening. I need this to stop. I am losing important emails.

Answer 1

Please note that our forum is a public platform, and I modified your question to hide your personal information in the description. Kindly ensure that you hide any personal or organizational information the next time you post an error or other details to protect personal data. 

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Hi Krystn Smerecki,

I understand how concerning it is to receive repeated delivery-failure messages for an address you do not recognize and to lose the original emails when deleting them. Please note that this is a user-to-user forum, so contributors cannot inspect mailbox activity.

This pattern is more consistent with an unfamiliar forwarding or redirect rule than ordinary junk mail. Blocking the postmaster address will not stop it because these messages are delivery reports.

1. Sign in to Outlook.com and open Settings > Mail > Rules. Delete any rule that forwards, redirects, or sends messages as attachments to an unfamiliar address. Then check Settings > Mail > Forwarding or Forwarding and IMAP and disable any forwarding you did not configure. See Manage email rules in Outlook.
2. To avoid deleting an entire grouped thread, open Settings > Mail > Layout and select Show email as individual messages before deleting any delivery report.
3. Restore the affected emails from Deleted Items. If they are not there, select Recover items deleted from this folder, choose the messages, and select Restore.
4. Review your Microsoft account recent activity. If anything is unfamiliar, secure the account, change the password, and enable two-step verification.

If no unfamiliar rule or forwarding address appears but the delivery reports continue, you may contact Outlook.com support for a mailbox-level review by below steps:

1. Go to Outlook.com and sign in.  
2. Select the Help icon, the question mark, in the upper-right corner. 
3. In the Help pane that opens, search for "account management", then press Enter.   
4. Scroll down the page until you see "Still need help?", click Yes.   
5. Choose "Chat with a support agent in your web browser."  
6. Review the issue description and confirm an email address you can access. 
7. Click Confirm to create the service request. The screen will indicate that your request has been submitted and the system is connecting you to Outlook.com live chat support, which may take a moment to load.  

I hope these steps stop the forwarding activity and help recover the deleted messages.